Newtown

The FBI said Monday it conducted more background checks for firearms sales and permits to carry guns the week following the Newtown, Conn., shooting massacre that it has in any other one-week period since 1998.

A new video game based on Syria’s civil war challenges players to make the hard choices facing the country’s rebels. Is it better to negotiate peace with the regime of President Bashar Assad, for example, or dispatch jihadist fighters to kill pro-government thugs?

Too many students worry more about being killed by a gun than learning in the classroom, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said on Thursday, as he cautioned that firearms alone do not make schools safer.

President Barack Obama is launching the nation’s most sweeping effort to curb gun violence in nearly two decades, urging a reluctant Congress to ban military-style assault weapons as well as the kinds of high-capacity ammunition magazines used in last month’s massacre of 20 elementary school children in Newtown, Conn.

Virginians overwhelmingly support requiring background checks on buyers at gun shows and posting armed police officers in public school buildings after last month’s Connecticut school shooting, according to a statewide poll released Thursday.